Shinji Ikari One Shot

Underneath my wings

Lt. Shinji Ikari sat in the darkness of the cockpit. He was clenching and unclenching his hands around the controls, trying to keep them warm. It was this damned synchro system. He couldn't just see a thermometer; he had to feel it, just like the bird. In the cold launch shaft, deep underground with no light, it was freezing. He had been in the LCL filled cockpit, on standby, for hours, ever since the angel had been detected in high orbit.

"Ikari, do you read me?!"

Shinji was donning his plug suit as quickly as he could when he heard the radio in his helmet going off on the bench.

"Lt. Ikari, come in!"

Shinji cinched the suit up with the tap of a button and quickly pushed the helmet down over his head only to have the radio screaming in his ear.

"LT. IKAR-"

"This is Ikari, what's the alpha's status?" Shinji said as he fixed the seal between his suit and helmet.

"Alpha-six is one-oh-five kilometers up and approaching the Karman line. Currently over the Atlantic. At current trajectory, we predict Alpha-six will reach operational envelope in three hours, somewhere over the western pacific. It will require a sharp change in trajectory at some point to make landing in target zone." The girlish voice in the CIC rattled off. As she spoke, the information was laid out across his helmet's projected HUD.

"Roger that, on the hoof to hanger one. What is unit one's status?"

"Fueling and arming. Be advised, unit one has already been transferred to launch chute oh-oh-three."

Shinji turned on the ball of his foot to make a left instead of heading straight. "Roger that."

His plane was still level on the deck as final preparations were made. It was huge by air-superiority standards, even bigger than the Su-34 it was based on and that was made to be a bomber. The all-digital COFFIN cockpit sat within the fuselage, the port and starboard main cameras forming great yellow eyes at the seam of the hatch and the body. The nose was a like a stiletto dagger and with the golden heat coating looked like the beak of a crane. Along every other leading edge was another heat treatment, this formula having dried bright neon green. The remainder of the craft was dark gunmetal, or so the techs insisted. Shinji, and just about everyone else, said it was purple. The NERV half fig leaf adorned both tails in crimson red.

Shinji quickly settled into the cockpit and closed the hatch. As LCL began to flow in and his suit synced with the primary systems, he began running control checks. The neural connection between pilot and the plane's bio-computer provided a degree of control that just wasn't possible with sticks and levers, but it had its peculiarities. Shinji could tell that fueling was halfway complete by the slight hunger in his stomach. He knew the sensor suite was up and running because his senses felt more acute. He checked the thrust vectoring nozzles by flexing his calves and ankles, and he rustled the feather like flexible wing sections with his fingers.

All of this control came at a price of course, especially when you ride over a quarter million pounds of thrust. The forces involved would crush your blood from one end of your body to the other. This is where the pressurized LCL and plug suit came in, lessening the forces the pilot is subjected to and helping to control the body to get the pilot through what remained.

"Lt. Ikari, alpha-six has changed course and is now on final approach, prepare for launch. Switching to secure communication, please confirm."

"This is Firefox, confirmed. Ready for launch." Shinji said and ignited the twin engines. The sensation as they spun up was like taking off at a run, the heart quickly speeding up.

"Launching in 5…4…3…2…1, GO!"

The magnetic catapult kicked in and flung the aircraft and its pilot nearly thirty five hundred meters to the surface in a second. With the thermonuclear turbines at full as the evangelion fighter broke the surface, the shockwave split trees into splinters. Shinji kept the throttle wide open as he rose to meet the threat.

As the fighter rose through the atmosphere, a vast array of cameras and radar began taking the measure of the angel. All of the data flowed back through the titanic MAGI super computer cluster and to the desk of Lt. Maya Ibuki.

"Commander Ikari, MAGI has visual approximation."

Because of the vast distances during the approach and the insane speeds at which the combatants were traveling, a traditional visual identification would have been possible only within a few milliseconds. What appeared onscreen was a construction from available data.

"Angel appears basically similar in body plan to a large pterosaur, specifically resembling Quetzalcoatlus besides for size obviously. Wingspan is approximately eighty meters. MAGI has designated alpha-six Gaghiel." Within evangelion unit one, code name Firefox, the same model appeared in the corner of the pilot's HUD. The barely visible dot on the horizon gained a little green box around it and the text A6-GAGHIEL beside it. "Target aquired, prepping the Vicar." Shinji said, tapping controls. The Variable Energy Coil Rifle or VECR is the main weapon of the evangelion fighter and is spinal mounted directly below the cockpit and extending all the way back to between the twin engines. The tip of its barrel, located just below the point of the nose, is kept shrouded but for the microseconds it takes to fire the weapon. It is a sophisticated solenoid quench design, constantly improved by software upgrades to improve efficincy and velocity. During preparation, capacitors are charged and one of several ammunition payloads chambered. The evangelion carried plenty of conventional weapons, but the "vicar" as it was called, was the "Locked on, five seconds to contact." Shinji brought the nuclear turbines to one hundred and fifteen percent and corrected for his final approach. The moment the alpha became more than a dot, he pulled the trigger, because if it got any bigger he would be flying past by the time the shell left the barrel. He hoped to zoom past a dead monster turning into so much pink fire. Instead he had just the barest blink of an eye to see the thing tuck its wings and dive. The fucker had dodged. The fucking alpha dodged. Shinji cut power, rolled one hundred and eighty degrees, then pulled back and opened the throttle back up into a split-S. He could see the orange glare from the back of the diving angel pushing itself down impossibly fast with its AT field. Shinji recharged the vicar and lined up another shot. Just as the two reticles crossed his head and lined, just as he got positive tone, the beast suddenly flung its wings back open, braking so hard Shinji had to jerk hard not to smash into it as he zoomed past. No sooner had the lock on tone faded then Shinji hurt the dreaded warning tone. They had figured out early if an angel was focusing its AT field in any direction, it was getting ready to attack there. A system that could detect it and treat iot like radar lock was easy. The angel had lock on the evangelion. Shinji aileron rolled hard to the right, launching flash bang like counter-measures to hopefully confuse the alpha. He felt the searing heat as the beam of burning plasma scorched his wing. Nothing serious, just armor, but it was way too damn close.

Shinji broke Eva-01 Firefox out of the dive and gunned the engines. He nearly pissed himself when the angel broke off West, heading for Tokyo-3. It could have had him, but it thought he was running now, beneath notice.

Hardly.

Shinji slammed the throttle back and forth hard enough to give the damn thing whiplash as he made his high-G turn. With the engines red-lined and less than one thousand feet off the surface of the ocean, he slowly pulled ahead of the alpha.

"Firefox, alpha is less than five-oh-oh clicks outside terminal perimeter, what are you doing?!"

"This one is more maneuverable! I need to get him where he can't dodge!"

"Negative, I repeat, that is a negative! We do not know what will happen if the alpha gets inside the terminal perimeter. Engage at range with the Vee-e-see-ar!"

"No can do control, this ones too smart for that."

"Firefox-" Shinji cut off comms. He needed to concentrate.

As sea turned to land beneath him, he dropped even lower, just a few hundred feet off the ground. With the vicar canon fully charged and all of his convention missiles armed and ready to rock, he turned towards Tokyo-3. He could see the alpha above, a fireball racing across the sky, heading almost straight down towards the city. Just above downtown, their paths would cross. At this rate Shinji would have just flown by before the beast made impact.

Shinji flipped off the AoA and G limiters and switched the G-force compensators to heavy mode. He could feel the weight on his body right away as his soon and the LCL squeezed him tight.

Just on the edge of town, he yanked back hard on the stick and pushed the thrust vectoring nozzles to their dorsal limit. The fighter's nose shot straight up even as it continued forward.

Shinji strained every muscle in his body to stay awake as his blood tried to rush from his head. At the peak of the cobra maneuver, he was looking right at the enemy. If the alpha maneuvered in even the slightest, it would kill itself in the impact and miss its mark. Its only hope to complete its mission and to pass through the ground at this weakest point in the geofront, was to go through the evangelion.

Shinji fired the VECR cannon and every missile he had straight down the beast's throat. As the angel was torn to a pulpy mess, Shinji throttled up again. Normally in a cobra there is enough energy to torque the plane back down, but firing the vicar had pushed him down far enough in that low energy state that his after burners kicking in shattered half the windows in downtown from the pressure wave alone.

Shinji flipped comms back on and wooped in victory.

"Firefox to control, alpha is down. Request permission for tower flyby."

"Control to firefox, permission denied, we don't even have a tower. The commander wants you on the ground in three."

Shinji began the LCL purge as soon as he touched down and popped the cockpit the moment he came to a stop. He stood there, helmet held above his head, howling in victory as crew surrounded the plane. Once a ladder was brought he climbed down into mass of screaming NERV personnel.

"Pilot Ikari!" Came the commander's voice across the tarmac, and all went silent. You did not speak over Commander Ikari nor did you stand in HER way. Everyone snapped their heels together and saluted as she passed. When she reached Shinji, she did not hesitate to embrace him, squeezing him to her body even in her uniform and him still covered in LCL.

"I'm so proud of you. Your father would be so proud of you."

Shinji hugged his mother back and smiled. His father had died in an accident when he was a little boy. "I know mom, I just hope he's watching."

Yui looked over her son's shoulder at the crane like aircraft, still steaming as the air cooled its friction heated skin.

"He is Shinji. He is."

It was another four hours of debrief before Shinji finally left base and it was well into the next morning when he finally got home. Even so the lights were still on and as Shinji eased in the door, wearing civvies and his leather fighter jock jacket, an ashen haired little boy in one-piece airplane pajamas ran into his arms.

"Daddy!"

Shinji lifted his five-year old son up against his chest. "Hey there little man, aren't you up a little late?"

"Kaworu was having none of going to bed before his daddy got home." The always calm voice of Rei Ikari said, sliding up behind Shinji and hugging him with her cheek resting on his back.

As they put little Kaworu to bed, Shinji kissed his son on the forehead and looked into his eyes. His had inherited his mother's albinism, but thankfully all he had to show for it was those red eyes and grey hair. He could run and play outside just like all the other kids.

Rei took his jacket off and took her time undressing him in the darkness of their room. She, as she so loved to put it, 'expressed the collective gratitude of mankind' to her husband. As Shinji laid back, his wife asleep across his chest, his son gently snoring in the other room, he remembered when he had first become a pilot, nearly a decade ago. When the entire world was just a ball of dust beneath his feet, like that old song.

It wasn't just a ball of dust anymore though. It was where this woman and that child lived. That's why he flew now. Not to stay in the sky, but to come back down.

End

My ode to all things military aviation. Inspired by Top Gun, Area 88, Macross, Firefox, Ace Combat, and a whole bunch of Tom Clancy. The title and final bit are both references to Mighty Wings by Cheap Trick, which was on the Top Gun soundtrack. Notice the total absence of a danger zone reference.

I want to dedicate this to two people in particular. One is a guy who has been has been helping me out by reviewing since I started doing this a few months ago, Iyaoyas. The other kind is a Youtube personality I have been following for years, Nutnfancy. The latter was a USAF pilot and retired a LtCol. a couple years ago.

For the gear heads like myself:

Evangelion Unit 01, codename Firefox (cause it's a Russian built partially thought controlled fighter, get it?)

-Piloted by Lt. Shinji Ikari of the US Navy, seconded to UN NERV.

-Built by a collaboration of the Russian Military Aviation industry and based primarily on a Sukhoi design. Most resembles the Su-27 Flanker family of aircraft.

-Armed with the Vicar coil gun as well as a selection of missiles. Was originally going to have this be more Macross oriented and have the micro missiles and like a Gerwalk mode.

Evangelion Unit 02, codename Fire Drake

-Built by a collaboration of western European military aviation companies, including BAE, Messerschmitt, Dassalt, and Saab. Most resembles an earlier design of Saab's, the Draken. Resembles, not identical to and much bigger of course.

-Piloted by none other than Cpt. Asuka Langely Soryu of the Luftwaffe.

-Twin Vicar cannons mounted parallel to the body within the wings and enough hard points to level a small country.

-Not quite as maneuverable at speed as 01, lacking the twin nozzles, but faster and a more finished design. It does retain thrust vectoring.

Evangelion Unit 00, codename Feathered Serpent

-Built by Boeing and Lockheed, with internal components a collaboration between the Americans and the Israelis. Most resembles the F-22 Raptor.

-Originally piloted by Lt. Rei Ayanami (retired) of UN NERV, no pilot currently assigned.

-Armament: (CLASSIFIED)

-Operational history: (CLASSIFIED)

-Deployments: (CLASSIFIED)

-Removed from service after (CLASSIFIED) incident, which also prompted the retirement of the pilot.

-Current location: Deep freeze within Geofront, Tokyo-3, Japan.